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Saturday, July 27, 2013

Maps

"This is your fault." Charlie
stabs her finger harder on the horn and glares death through the
windshield at the horse eating grass in the middle of the road. The
horse doesn't move and the horn is probably the only part of the car
that actually works. "Roads should not have grass growing up in
the middle of them. Take the back roads, you said. It's more
interesting, you said. If I wanted to get closer to nature I'd go to
a zoo or watch a movie."

"Two roads diverged into a wood."

"And we're taking the one that
leads to serial killers and missing bodies. This isn't even on the
GPS."

I rub the bridge of my nose. "Or
the map."

"I still can't believe you know
how to fold a map. That's part of being a magician, isn't it?"

"You don't think a random healthy
horse on a road that isn't on any map at all could be unusual?"

She pulls her hands off the horn and
lets out a sigh. "When you put it like that, no. Let me guess:
dragon?"

"As far as I know all dragons work
in treasury offices or are CEOs."

Charlie's eyes narrow, a hint of red
seeping into them as the god inside her looks out. "I never know
when you're joking."

"Good. You're not supposed to."
I rap the dashboard with my knuckles and the engine grumbles a slow
death that sounds not unlike a demon passing wind. With luck that
wasn't anything I did.

Charlie gets out of the car as well and
marches up to the horse. "You. Get out of our way."

The eyes of the horse shine white in
response. A lot of magical creatures seem to be fixated on tricks
involving their eyes. A hint of claws shimmer in the air around
Charlie's fingers.

I cough and walk over. "I did tell
you that the monster under your bed-slash-god inside you that you are
shouldn't be called up for trivial reasons?"

Charlie pauses and pulls the aspect of
the god slowly back inside her, turning to face me. "Why are you
saying it like that?"

"Because," the horse says,
"the magician is telling me you're not a demon and I should not
destroy you."

She spins back, eyes wide. The unicorn
that stands in front of her is smaller than the horse and what every
deer dreams it was, as sharp as the wind and as swift as the sun. It
is beautiful and terrible and could easily drive one half-mad.

"I've seen better FX in
blockbuster movies." Charlie's pause is barely a hitch, her
voice almost steady.

The unicorn's horn turns translucent. I
cough again, louder.

"Magician," it says in a
voice fit to make hunter's wet themselves.

"She is with me. And I believe
beyond your purview?"

"Time was they would be older and
wait for me." The unicorn's horn fades slowly from view as it
draws up the seeming of a horse around itself again. "Men,
women: it would not matter. They would see my purity and it would be
a sign their own could end. And now I hide on roads without names or
desires lest I be hunted down and used."

There is not much even a magician can
say to that, or at least nothing kind. " I could increase the
wards on this place."

"I need nothing from you." It
turns and walks into the woods, the grace entirely that of a horse.

I walk back to the car.

"What was that about?"
Charlie says as she gets in, trying to coax the engine back to life.

"A unicorn only has power over
virgins."

"You're not a virgin."

"No."

"You look like one."

"Do you want to know what colours
I could turn your hair?"

Charlie just grins and twists the key
again until the car grumbles into life. "So how did we end up on
this road?"

"I think no one has loved this car
even once of all the people who owned it."

She pauses, mid-shift on the clutch,
continues. "You mean no one has attempted stuff from the karma
sutra in the back seat? Or the front?"

"I mean what I said. It's a
magician thing."

"The unicorn didn't know?"

"Even unicorns see only what they
want to see." I run fingers over the dashboard: the car asks for
no magic, I offer it none.

"Are we getting rid of the car in
the next town?" Charlie asks once we turn onto a proper road
again.

"Yes." She asks nothing else.
"All we could offer is pity, and the car doesn't deserve that."

"We can give it to a kid who just
got his licence. It might be enough," she says finally as we
pull into a town so small the GPS is reluctant to admit it exists.
"But we're definitely taking proper roads from now on. With your
luck we'll find out dragons are still around and have to rescue a
princess."

I snort. "Those are just stories.
That's not what princesses are for."

She slows the car and looks out the
window for likely owners for the car and asks no questions at all. I
leave her to decide on her own answers and close my eyes, pretending
a sleep that becomes real sooner than expected.

Ah, yeah. That was intended to BE awkward, both with the magician warning the unicorn and trying to get Charlie to realize she had to back off. I think that was the third attempt at making it, well, still readable. Clearly needs more work.

A collection of miscellany

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.

- Dr. Joycelyn Elders

In fantasy, impossible things exist. In science fiction, impossible things exist and can be understood by humans. In supernatural horror, impossible things exist and cannot live in peace with humans.

- Will Shetterly

We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true.

- Ravi Zacharia

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

- Richard Dawkins

In the time of harmony the golden age is not in the past, it is in the future

- Paul Signac

"No" is the wildest word in the English language.

- Emily Dickinson

The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking is unconscious delusion.

- Dean Radin

“You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it’s hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it’s better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can’t write anybody’s book but your own.”